Editors Note:
Alan Worsley was the first dreamer to use specific Rapid Eye
Move-ment (REM) signals in a sleep laboratory to indicate that he
knew he had started a lucid dream. These excerpts from a somewhat
longer essay tell us about his child-hood development efforts,
specific personal experiments, and some conclusions from his
experience as an "oneironaut" in lucid dream research
laboratories.

My most important
qualification for presenting this paper is an extensive direct
experience of lucid dreams. I have had hundreds of lucid dreams
in which I have done an experiment or made some observation. In
sleep-laboratory work I have had 50 signal-verified lucid dreams.
A primary concern of mine is with the philosophy and
phenomenology of dreaming and altered states of consciousness and
with what they can tell us abut normal consciousness.

Lucid
Dreaming Personal History: Development Of Elementary Techniques

As far as I remember, I
achieved my first lucid dream by a deliberately devel-oped
technique, at about age five. I had discovered I could wake
myself from fright-ening dreams by shouting, "Mother!"
Knowing I had this escape route I became more daring; I
deliberately allowed a dream of falling to continue, and nothing
bad happened. I became even more confident and, having a lucid
dream every few months, I gradually learned to recognize that I
was dreaming even when the dream was not frightening and I did
not have to remember it was only a dream. I also learned that I
could wake if I wanted to. I became fascinated by the idea of
being free in my own world. As I grew older I began to call these
dreams "conscious" dreams.

At about age 12, I
planned my first "conscious-dream" experiment. It was
to investigate how much detail it is possible to see in a dream.
In the first lucid dream I had after planning the experiment I
remembered to do it. I was standing in a door-way, the frame of
which was made of wood. I decided to look for the grain in the
wood. I discovered I could see the fine details of the grain and
concluded that visual acuity was good in dreams. I have since
realized that detail in dreams is not so much perceived as
created. My conclusion should have been that it is possible for
fine detail to be created in dreams.

Every few weeks or
months I would have one of these exciting adventures. Recently I
have performed more sophisticated experiments. One series of
exper-iments explored the properties of television sets in my
dreams. I started with simple tasks such as turning a TV set on
and off, increasing the sound, changing channels, or adding
color. Then I decided it would be interesting if, having selected
a partic-ular scene, I could move into it. I managed to do this
by expanding the screen until the edges were no longer visible
and then walking into the scene. . . .

Suspension
Of Disbelief

When one is awake and
looking at the physical world, there is no problem in believing
it to be real. The problem comes when an apparently physically
real world appears in a dream and one wishes to realize that it
is not physically real or, having deliberately altered it,
knowing it is only a dream, to re-establish the convincing
reality of it. In controlling lucid dreams one is trying to do
two things at once which seem at odds with each other; to induce
imagery and to pretend that one is not re-sponsible for the
imagery. The images so created in lucid dreams seem to come with
reality built-in.

In lucid
dreams, I try to balance the degree of awareness (needed for
informed control) that it is "only a dream" with the
autonomy and spontaneous unpredictable creativity of dreams.
These latter characteristics contribute to the feeling that the
reality is authentic. This balancing can be difficult to do when
I carry out actions within the dream scene with the full
knowledge that I am dreaming and have chosen the whole scene
deliberately. I have to suspend disbelief, as when watching a
play. It is easy to experience a well-produced play or a film as
"real" even though, at any time, one may step back to
remind oneself that it is "only a play."

What
Causes Dreams?

My
impression is that nearly all dreams begin with involuntary
imagery after which, if the dream is to continue, it requires
attention, and better still, active par-ticipation. Dream
imagery, unlike a film, cannot continue to run independently of
the brain. In nonlucid dreams the attention and the participation
are "involuntary" as I am taken in by the imagery and I
do what it seems to demand. In lucid dreaming I can choose to
attend to the dream or to some other mental activity such as
imagin-ing, calculating, or remembering a dream experiment. In my
experience, if attention is focussed on these other activities
for more than a few seconds the dream may fade. I may be able to
recover the dream state by recalling or imagining the last dream
scene or starting a new one, but if the process to which I have
been attending is more similar to waking thought than to dreaming
I may even wake up. If I lose the dream but do not wake, even
though I am still lucid, I tend to become disoriented, perhaps
because there is no stable focus or content to be lucid about. In
order to carry out an experiment requiring waking-type thought in
a lucid dream without losing the dream imagery I sometimes switch
attention every two or three seconds between attending to the
dream imagery and then to ensuring its maintenance. This seems to
allow refreshment of the dream imagery during prolonged non-dream
tasks such as communicating with the outside
world. . . .

REM
Control by Avoiding Eye Movement

As I have
grown increasingly sophisticated in managing dream imagery, I
have developed the ability to choose whether to regard the
imagery as moving in relation to me or myself as moving in
relation to it. In the sleep laboratory, not only can I move my
eyes at will, as when signalling, but I can keep them still when
otherwise they might be moving, as between signals. That I am
able to keep them still when required helps to make the signals
clear. By this means it may be possible to reduce markedly the
very characteristic which gives REM sleep its name, thereby
making "phasic" REM less distinguishable from
"tonic" REM.

Some eye
movements associated with scanning a dream scene can be avoided
by very simple techniques. In order to look at a different part
of a dream scene, I may be able to move it into view instead of
moving the direction of my gaze. For instance, if I wish to look
at my hand in a dream and my hand is not already in view, I can
fix my gaze on the part of the dream scene at which I am already
looking and bring my dream hand into line with it. This is an
easy alternative. If the whole scene is a large picture which I
am holding in my hand, to look at a different part of the scene I
can move the picture instead of moving my eyes, though to
forestall the pos-sibility of my eyes making a reflex tracking
movement I have to move the picture very quickly. Another way to
not move my eyes while dreaming is to stare at a sta-tionary
object. If I moved my eyes I would see a different part of the
dream scene.

I can scan
a dream scene while keeping my eyes still by using a dream
mirror. Though a dreamed mirror appears in the dream to be a real
object, it is only a virtual or dreamed device. If I look
straight into the mirror, not changing the direction of my gaze,
I can look at different parts of the dream scene by moving only
the mirror.

By using
these techniques I alter my expectations. I still expect to see
different parts of the dream scene, but I do not expect to have
to move my eyes to do so. It would be interesting to discover
just how much the REMs of phasic REM can be reduced by these
techniques.

Delay
In Dream Imagery Generation

In some of
my experiments I have investigated the delay which occurs between
the moment of willing or expecting a change to occur in dream
imagery and the mo-ment of its actually beginning to change. The
so-called "light-switch-phenomenon" is perhaps the most
familiar illustration of this delay. I have observed many times,
as others have, that when it is dark in dreams and I try to
switch on a light, the light will not come on, or at least not
come on immediately or brightly. The same applies to attempts I
have made to lengthen my arm, sink into the ground or to make
things appear out of nothing.

In waking
life making your arm longer is impossible. Therefore, when I
tried it in a lucid dream I had no experience of how it should be
done. I tried to stretch it further than I knew it would stretch
when awake. After a delay of one or two seconds, my arm started
to grow longer and my right hand soon disappeared into the
distance. Then I realized I had not been as successful as I had
first thought; I could feel another arm at my side. In order to
achieve correspondence of visual with tactile and kinesthetic
imagery I repeated the arm lengthening procedure while sliding my
hand along a rough wall and watching it closely. In this way I
generated tactile sensations in my hand while it moved away from
me, and thereby I successfully integrated all relevant imagery
modes. I am now able to retrieve distant objects using this arm
lengthening technique. . . .

Implications
of Transferring Lucidity Techniques To Nonlucid Dreams

I have
noticed a tendency for techniques first developed in my lucid
dreams to become incorporated into my repertoire of dream
experiences generally. For instance I first used the
arm-lengthening technique in a lucid dream. Later, in what
appeared to be a nonlucid dream, I used the arm-lengthening
technique as if I knew it would work, even though the presumption
in nonlucid dreams is that one is in the real world where
miracles are impossible. Does this mean that though I was not
"aware" that I was dreaming, I somehow nevertheless
knew that contrary to waking experience I would be able to
lengthen my arm?

It appears
that my nonlucid dreaming self has the ability to exploit
techniques that my lucid dreaming self has developed. If
"I" have a wonderful time in nonlucid dreams by using
techniques developed in lucid dreams, but the lucid
"I," the lucid person who would clearly recognize the
experience as a dream, am not there, from the point of view of
the waking self whose wonderful time was it?

I have come
to realize through consideration of my own dream observations
that, like other skillssuch as driving a car or playing the
pianowhich are prac-tised diligently with great effort and
concentration, "dreaming" is a learnable skill.

|Having
learned by many hours of practice to operate reasonably well in a
lucid dream I have found that techniques which once required
deliberation have become second nature. This includes to some
extent the need to remind myself that I am dreaming. Habitual
familiarity with the implications of the fact that I am dreaming
now enables me to act quickly and incisively whereas before I
would dither and get involved in useless side issues. For
instance I remember once many years ago trying to go to a
different scene in a lucid dream by hitching a lift. Now I can
change the scene by simply closing my eyes and imagining the next
scene.

In a sense
the lucidity, once it has started, has become, paradoxically,
more automatic. In lucid dreams I now engage in
"dangerous" activities such as flying, hitting walls
and passing through them without stopping, knowing I am perfectly
safe. I know very well what I am doing without having to think
about it.

If one
learns to dream so well, so fluently, that one becomes as a fish
in water, in control but not having to think about it, is that
still lucid dreaming?

In fact, I
have begun to think that many people who would not call
themselves lucid dreamers have in fact learned to "dream
well." They may fly or perform other miraculous feats in
their dreams, somehow recognizing that it is safe to do so,
though they may never have articulated this recognition. They may
in effect be lead-ing secret lives, of which their waking selves
are hardly aware if, like most people, they forget their dreams.